Ticuu's Divination

The two Legionaries rooted through the armory of their deposed emperor. They swept the rubble aside and lifted a Bow of sharp metal, its thin frame of blackened blades bound with wire.

"This is the one the Psions made so you can't miss."

"Huh. How'd they do it?"

"They put time in it."

"What kinds of time?"

"Kinds so when you shoot, that's always when the arrows hit."

"You never ever miss?"

"Not unless you were going to anyway."

"But if you do miss, it'll make it a time that you don't?"

"Right. Unless this time was a time when you did."

**

It was the third day of the dry joining. Ticuu's voice was rasped raw, but still he clutched the Bow to his chest and held it placid in his mind.

Ticuu melded his thoughts with the null. A bastardized metaconcert, one voice in the expanse—a temporal harmony of one.

Three arrows, hissing faintly with Solar power, bristled in his fist.

Then, an echo: a rusty whine of horsehair on frayed wire. Ticuu plucked the bowstring. Spots of blood appeared on the floor. He plucked again, filling the air with oppressive vibration.

Blood welled from his fingers and dripped to match the pattern at his feet.

**

"How's it make arrows?"

"They come from time, because they got put there before."

"When you shoot it, how's it know what heads to hit?"

"It goes in time and gets a future where heads always had arrows in 'em."

"But which heads, though?"

"The ones that had arrows already."

**

Ticuu's mind emptied itself, dissipating across the pitch and froth of what was to be.

Time was an empty wheel around him. His song held it, and the joining pinned it in place. Three points of harmony between the will and the physical.

His fist rose. Three shafts pierced his Y-shaped pupil. They had always been there. Three points, pushed through forever.